Health and Social Care Leadership Review

Baroness Masham of Ilton Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government for instigating this—

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, we appear to have had a break in service, but I think we now have the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

It is tragic that so many babies and mothers have died when they should have been safe in hospital. What happened to the standards of care which were required? Fresh young enthusiastic people joining the NHS and those in care should be safe from bullying, harassment and discrimination. If something goes wrong with patients’ treatment and care, should there not be a duty of candour, with openness and honesty? Surely this should be incorporated in leadership education. I hope that it will be.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that there should be a duty of candour. Noble Lords will remember that during the Health and Care Bill debates there was the debate around the openness of HSIB process. Here we have a difficult balance. On one hand, if someone has acted inappropriately or caused damage, you would want them to be brought to justice but, on the other hand, we know that the NHS has a culture of cover-up when things go wrong. It is great that we praise the NHS when things go well but I have heard too many stories of when things go wrong and clinicians close ranks and cover up.

Sometimes, they gaslight. I was talking about this the other day to a young official in the department and she told me about her friend, a young Afro-Caribbean female, whose baby died during birth. When she complained, the papers suddenly, magically disappeared. How can that happen? We have to make sure that there is real justice, but we have to get the right balance. HSIB makes sure that there is a safe space so people can feel free to come forward, so that we learn from that. Sometimes there may not be justice for the individual, but we can make sure that we avoid a repeat of these incidents. The Ockenden report clearly showed the role that the culture of the organisation played. We must be careful: there should not always be a focus just on numbers; we do not want to train people within the wrong culture and do more damage. We have to tackle all these issues at the same time.